This presentation was made in June 1994 at a symposium entitled "Press Regulation: How far has it come?" in Seoul, Korea. The symposium was presented by the International Communication Research Institute, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and the Citizens Coalition for Media Watch. The Munhwa Broadcasting Corp. and Korea Press Center were hosts. Among the participants were Joann Byrd, ombudsman for The Washington Post; Richard P. Cunningham, professor, New York University; Lynne Enders Glaser, ombudsman, The Fresno Bee; Arthur C. Nauman, ombudsman, The Sacramento Bee; and William Morgan, ombudsman, Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

By William Morgan
All rights reserved

I am going to begin by showing you a tape of people talking about journalism. It's an edited version of something put together for a journalists' symposium CBC held in Ottawa last year. The aim was to get those attending the symposium thinking a little more about how they -- and journalism generally -- are perceived.

The tape starts by talking about developments in politics and political journalism. It talks about the mutual mistrust existing between a lot of journalists and politicians and how politicians more and more are trying to reach the public directly -- without the involvement of traditional journalism -- by appearing on a whole variety of entertainment programs and open-line shows. But the tape also contains disturbing news for journalists about how they and the work they do are viewed by media critics and by members of the public. Some of the comments are too general, some of them unfairly stereotype journalists in just the same way as journalists sometimes are said to stereotype people they are covering. There is also some unnecessarily vulgar language, for which I apologize in advance. But there are, I think, quite a few thoughts and comments on this tape which journalists and the organizations that employ them should not continue to ignore.

(Tape was approximately 10 minutes.)

So what have we learned from this tape? We've learned that the traditional news media no longer dominate political coverage in North America as they once did, and that politicians have developed many alternative ways of approaching the public so they won't have to deal with journalists. We've been told that live coverage has helped television viewers to see more of various events for themselves and that, as a result, they are much more critical of the packaged versions that journalists offer.

We're told that the numbers of journalists have steadily grown, but that they tend to cling together, talking mainly to each other and not to the public, and that the actual variety and quality of coverage has not improved in proportion to the growing numbers of journalists. We have been told about the herd mentality and about journalistic group-think. We have been told that journalists can't take a joke. And that journalists can give out criticism but can't take it. And we've certainly seen populist politicians do very well by criticising and running against the traditional journalistic media. Most importantly, we've been reminded that a lot of people simply don't trust journalists, don't trust journalism as an institution and that too many journalists, though dependent on the public for their living, are considered arrogant, isolated from that public and even contemptuous of it.

But why? Journalists being better paid, or no longer being working class, or a TV network anchorman owning a house in an expensive seaside resort, surely are not, by themselves, enough reason for the public to have become so alienated from journalists. Then, what is it, in particular, that makes it seem to people that journalists are impervious to criticism and contemptuous of the public they are paid to serve?

Well, after a great many years in journalism, I have come to believe that much of the reason for this growing public cynicism and mistrust of journalists and of large journalistic organizations has to do with the way they handle complaints about their own work.

In fact, that is why, after a decade of running first CBC Current Affairs programming and then the corporation's whole News and Current Affairs Division, I was willing to take on the job of being CBC's ombudsman.

Over the years when I had a large staff of journalists reporting to me, I would often find myself basing judgments about the capability of an individual journalist on how he or she handled a story that I knew something about. I always figured that if a journalist's work made sense to a person with some real knowledge of the subject matter under discussion then this was probably an able journalist and one you could trust.

Similarly, I have come to feel that one can make quite telling judgments about the character and trustworthiness of a journalist or a journalistic organization based on how they respond to complaints and how they handle an error when they find that one has been made.

Of course, I recognize that admitting error or guilt is one of the hardest things for any human being to do, whether it's one of our children, faced with a broken vase, saying, "I wasn't even in the room at the time...and besides I hardly touched it" or one of our politicians saying, "I thought it was only really a conflict of situation if people actually knew about it."

But, if people in general find it hard to admit an error, it sometimes seems that journalists and journalistic organizations find it even harder. Strange isn't it how those who seem to find it so easy to report on the errors and transgressions of others should find it so difficult to do the same about their own mistakes? I've wondered a bit over the years about why this should be the case.

There is a nice little speech about it in an English play called "Pravda" and, if there's time, I'd like to read an excerpt to you. The play was a satire on the British press, its proprietors, its journalists and, I guess, its ethics. The title "Pravda" comes, of course, from that old joke in the former Soviet Union about the press there during all the years of censorship and Communist Party control of the media. As you probably know, there were two major newspapers in the former Soviet Union. One is called "Pravda," which is Russian for "The Truth," and the other is called "Isvestia," which is Russian for "The News." And, at least until the last three or four years, generations of Soviet people had reminded each other that there was no truth in The News and no news in The Truth.

Anyhow, the play is called "Pravda" and the little scene I am referring to happens in the newsroom of an English provincial newspaper call the Leicester "Bystander." A woman named Moira Patterson comes into the newsroom and complains mildly to the young assistant editor that, on page 5 of that morning's paper, she has been identified as the owner of a health food shop and as the mother of someone called Mark Patterson, who has just been convicted of selling cocaine.

Mrs. Patterson explains that there has been a terrible mix-up. She has no son called Mark. In fact, she has no children at all. But, since 8:00 this morning, her shop has had no customers. She asks the assistant editor to publish a correction in the following morning's paper and the assistant editor says:

"Look, I'll be frank...it isn't very easy. You will find on most newspapers a policy, you see. The Bystander...this newspaper, we...don't publish corrections. Because we don't like them. I'll be honest. They just don't look good on the page. If every time we got something wrong we published a correction, then a newspaper would just be a footnote to yesterday's newspaper and yesterday's newspaper a footnote to the day before's. In fact, going further, now thinking about it, as I see it, look...a newspaper isn't just a scrap of paper, it's something that people feel they have to trust. And if they can't trust it, why should they read it? A thing either is true or it isn't. So by definition, what is printed must be true -- otherwise why print it? And if we apologize and correct, how can the readers know what is true and what is not? So, you see why I can't print your correction. It's really a matter -- finally -- of journalistic ethics."

One of the things I like about that speech, aside from how nicely it captures a sort of self-righteous, circular logic that is exhibited in the thinking not just of some journalists but of various self-policing professional groups, too, is that, in its own way, the speech is honest about their very worst nightmare. As we know, doctors, lawyers and others regulate and police themselves rather secretively and tend to be very reticent about reporting wrongdoing by themselves or by members of their own group. I think it is somewhat similar for journalists, that they, too, have a collective bad dream that, if all their errors were somehow revealed, newspapers and news broadcasts would become not scenes of journalistic triumph and accomplishment but scenes of journalistic humiliation and misery.

Of course the situation is never really as bad as their worst fears would suggest, and we all know that. So why are they so insecure? I think part of the reason is that people who go into journalism, while they are just people, are in most cases genuinely conscientious people and they really do want to get everything right. But they also know, from experience, that journalism is a complex, rushed, confusing, highly competitive activity with information coming from dozens of different sources and directions, often having to be taken entirely on trust, and always with the threat of deadlines hanging over one's head.

My good friend Michael Nelson, when he was general manager of Reuters news agency, used to say that Reuters' private motto was, "We may not always be first, but at least we're not often wrong." But, while they may joke about it in private, many journalists feel that if even the very possibility of error were admitted to the public it would open a floodgate and release a torrent that could only end in all of journalism and all trust in it being washed completely away.

I think, in fairness, we do need to keep this ever-present anxiety in mind. I think it is important for all of us to remember that the people who do journalism are only human, too, and subject to all the weaknesses and imperfections and insecurities that other humans are prone to and that they do their jobs under unnerving, awful pressures. Indeed, I've said in the past -- and I still think it true -- that good journalism is a triumph over human nature and the pressures of time.

But at the CBC we have, all the same, wanted to try to ensure that good journalism triumphs over time and human nature as frequently as possible. We want to help our journalists get over their insecurities and anxieties, help them to recognize that honesty about mistakes can be liberating, not just threatening and that, in the end, the truth will always enhance the credibility of journalism.

For that reason, in the early '80s the CBC set down for the first time in a single document the key policies and standards governing the practice of journalism within the corporation. Until that time, extraordinary as it may seem, journalists in the CBC had been operating mostly on a combination of trace memory and reinvention of standards. The existence of this new Journalism Policy Book at least made sure that everyone in the organization would know how they were supposed to behave in doing their jobs and who in the organization they should contact when in doubt. The Policy Book, in fact, became both a guide for the journalists within the organization and, as well, a document, a set of standards, against which members of the public and those who had dealings with CBC journalism could judge the performance of the CBC's journalists.

This was a significant step. Indeed, many journalistic organizations still do not have such a comprehensive policy guide for their staffs. But there was still an understandable concern about public accountability and independent review of CBC journalism and of the individuals who contribute to it.

Probably the kindest thing you could say about CBC's handling of complaints regarding its journalism at that time would be that it was uneven. Sometimes the complainant would get a thoughtful, detailed response. But, other times, espcially when the complaint was sent directly to a program, there would be no response at all.

When people directed their complaints to the most senior levels of the organization, they would generally receive a reply. But, often as not, the substance of that reply would originate from within the program line and would consist largely of material and comments supplied by those who were responsible for the broadcast that had been the original subject of the complaint. Perhaps not surprisingly, many people, including members of the CBC's board of directors, felt that CBC was still too defensive and unresponsive to complaints, that there was still no truly adequate arrangement to ensure accountability of the journalists through wholly independent scrutiny of their work.

CBC management explored the possibility of a Press Council approach. Unfortunately, though the Press Council system of providing redress for complaints against member organizations, mostly newspapers, in Canada is generally judged to be of some real value, Press Councils function separately within each individual province of Canada and there exists no overall national system in which a nationwide broadcasting organization like the CBC could participate.

We explored the possibility of joining with other broadcasters, including those from the private sector, in a National Broadcasting Standards Council. But, in the end, either because of the expense involved or because they did not want to be measured by CBC's demanding standards, the private broadcasters decided not to participate.

Finally, the CBC decided to go it alone and to become the first major national broadcaster in the world with an independent office of the ombdusman. So, now, for the first time, people with an unsatisfied complaint about CBC journalism can have it reviewed by someone who is completely independent of those who put the program on the air and of program management. To ensure that viewers and listeners would know about the ombudsman's office, brochures were mailed out and promotional spots were broadcast on radio and television.

And how is it working so far? Well, I think not badly.

Complaints are funny things. Sometimes they say more about the person complaining than about the issue that they are complaining about. I remember a few years ago the British Travel Agents' Association conducted a survey of complaints their member organizations had received from Britons who had traveled abroad on holiday. The most frequent complaint from British tourists abroad was that the people in the country they visited spoke a foreign language.

But most of the complaints we have dealt with so far have been serious and based on thoughtful, genuine concern. On average, about 10 percent of the complaints processed each year have been found to be fully justified and about another 20 percent to be partly justified. That may sound like a lot. But when you consider the thousands of hours of journalism broadcast by CBC each year and the fact that the universe of 100 percent were all complaints from people who truly believed their complaint was justified, I think the figures actually reflect quite well on CBC journalism.

One of the effects of the office's existence has been that some CBC journalists are themselves doing a better job of responding to the complaints they receive, perhaps partly because they know that the complainant can appeal to the ombudsman if he or she is not satisfied with the initial reponse.

The public reaction has also been encouraging. We have had quite a number of letters, many of them even from people whose complaints we did not uphold, saying how pleased they were that there finally was an independent review mechanism and that their complaint had at least been examined seriously.

There have also been some interesting international developments. National networks in a number of countries now have ombudsmen or media criticism programs. After the embarrassment of the GM truck fuel-tank story, NBC appointed its first ombudsman, though he reports to the president of the news division and is therefore not fully independent of NBC journalism.

The new chairman of the South African Broadcasting Corp. tells me that she and her board will establish an independent ombudsman. And the BBC has just created a new Program Complaints Unit whose head, while he reports to the BBC's board of management rather than to its board of governors, nonetheless will perform some aspects of an ombudsman's role.

I found this latter development particularly interesting because I had discussed the subject about three years ago with Michael Checkland, a long-time friend and colleague, when he was still director general of the BBC. At that time, Michael told me he would like to set up an ombudsmanÕs office, as CBC had done, but that BBC's journalism staff would never let him get away with it. And, of course, the reaction of an organization's staff to the findings and to the very existence of an independent office of the ombudsman is a serious matter.

There have been times in recent months and years when various CBC journalists were bitterly angry with me because I had agreed with a complaint about their work. I feel that's a shame, especially when they are old friends or former close colleagues. Some people even believe that journalists consciously or unconsciously unite in disapproving of an ombudsman or in trying to make the ombudsman feel uncomfortable. Perhaps another example of the herd mentality?

One of CBC's directors, a person with whom I haven't always agreed, has described this phenomenon as "accountability chill." And, perhaps, at least on this occasion, he is right. Anyway, I can't let negative reactions from staff stop me. If our journalists were wrong and cannot admit it, then I have to admit it for them. The public have the right to expect that from any responsible journalism organization, perhaps especially from a publicly funded one like the CBC.

And some would say that it isn't entirely a bad thing for journalists once in a while to be reminded, when it is justified, about how it feels to be the object of criticism of the kind that people see journalists routinely handing out to everyone else.

And I hope, too, as they learn over time that admitting a mistake does not cause the entire world to collapse around their ears, that our journalists will become increasingly relaxed and open about dealing with errors and corrections in their own daily work.

And if they don't...well, I guess people can always write or call the ombudsman.